


Cathédrale

by ColdWarSaint



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Church Sex, Complete, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, canonverse, shape-shifting nations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 14:40:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22717639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColdWarSaint/pseuds/ColdWarSaint
Summary: France and Prussia have been meeting each other for years. A suspension of the rules, of... whatever they're supposed to be. This time around, they meet in a cathedral. Prussia resolves to do what he has been taught the moral thing is, to be someone of higher standing, but when has he ever managed that?(Mostly just Prussia thinking about religion and the implications of what a nation is. If you wanted to read something, like, that's sexy, this is not going to be it. This is kind of... sad.)
Relationships: France/Prussia (Hetalia)
Kudos: 21





	Cathédrale

Their footsteps were hushed against the plush red of the opulent carpets, the likes of which Prussia saw only on Sundays, everything else dedicated to being a soldier. To being pure of heart and mind, uncorrupted by this wealth only allotted to these houses of God where it was appropriate...

He knew what the man behind him thought about the wealth of the Catholic Church, of Protestants, of Benedictions versus Franciscans, of God, and divinity, and everything else under the sun, because he never ceased speaking. Always whispering, hissing like the snake in Eden any time they were close enough. This was no different. There was a hand on his shoulder, and it was a gentle and soft hand unlike the hands of the men— all men— he had spent his life with.

Dazzling light fading now, hardly breaking through the colored glass all around them, the last beams reaching out to gently, lovingly brush the pale blonde hair of the head bent slightly over his. They were walking towards the confessionals, towards the altar, towards God. 

It was warm in the Cathedral. The soaring roof a sky of deep brown rafters and glittering mosaic clouds. Tiny points of light flickered in the windows, at the entrance. Before them, a massive cross and a dying man— accurate to the suffering of the battlefield in contorted features. Maybe it wasn't very warm; maybe Prussia was used to being outside. 

"We are not men, and we are not women. We are not anything. And we are not souls," France was whispering, his voice like smooth silk, and Prussia was not looking at him, he was looking at the Eucharist, and he was...

France said he was Catholic, of course he was Catholic. And Prussia said he was not. It was complicated. How then, did he always seem to be the one who cared so much about what it was he ought to be doing? Wasn't it beaten into France all those years of being a Catholic? Wasn't it the way that he policed himself now, his thoughts, the way to be a good person or— at least— to caricature one as much as a thing that was not a person could? 

"We are not something that can be judged the way that men are," France had his hands on Prussia's shoulders, on his arms. They were before the altar now, and Prussia looked up, and his eyes narrowed against the opulence: he thought himself humble. But if he were offered the world, he would not hesitate to seize it. 

They felt, and they hurt, and they loved, and Prussia knew, in his heart, that there was judgment, and that he would deserve it when it came, and he didn't know how to reconcile that with what he wanted. 

"You should confess," France was pulling him now, away from the altar, to the confessionals, and he was allowing it. He was allowing himself to be put into a small space with the man, an angel, blonde and fine, like the portraits of saints-- gentle. 

"You're not a priest," Gilbert's voice was wry, and he said nothing of them sharing such intimacy. Breathing in and out the same air. 

"I am a nation: I am everything." France pushed him down onto the seat, his back against the door, barring any escape. He smiled in the dim light like a flash of lightning across a grey sky. There was no more grandeur here. Sin was a dark and close reality. 

"I'm angry with you," Prussia began, because that was the easiest place to begin. When weren't they angry? When wasn't there something between them that he could hold on to. 

"That isn't a secret." France was close, and he was Catholic; he was domineering and revolutionary, and a danger to the stability of Europe— Prussia shook his head, and his eyes found the patterning of wood through which a priest would speak to him. _There isn't a point in saying any of that._

"Is confession about secrets? Wrath _is_ a sin, last time I checked." 

"Well, I do not need you to go through them all, I already know what you would tell me—" France leaned in, and, as he was already so close, there was not much of a distance to close before he could touch Prussia's cheek. "Pride. That is your fatal flaw." 

The back of his hand trailed across Prussia's cheekbone, awakening a distinct prickling that rushed across his entire body, his hair standing on end. _France has such soft hands..._

"The idea that you alone could do it all, own it all." When he reached Prussia's ear, the hand reversed, wrist flicking gently, warm palm pressed against his cool cheek, a finger brushing a tangled strand of dead white hair that should have been slicked back but had long fallen. That kind of touch was wholly wrong to the soldier; he did not know it by name. 

"And greed, your ideas of owning the world." France's thumb moved over the skin just under his eye, and he didn't understand why he wanted to flinch when he wasn't hurt. Not that any pain could make him flinch. 

"Or, is that power-lust?" At the word lust, France's fingers trailed across his cheek, they moved down to cup his chin in a delicate hold, and his thumb slowly came to rest over Prussia's lips. "Do you feel any other type of lust, my stone man?" 

A brush across his lips. The unfamiliar feeling of something gentle and base; he felt heat rush over his skin, an instinct he did his best to ignore. 

"No." He answered, and his voice was rougher than he recognized. What was the point of the game they were playing? And he wondered if France believed his own words, and if France felt anything human at all. _Is he supposed to?_

"Envy...?" France was close enough that Prussia can feel the warmth of his breath. The hiss of air between his teeth. He was physical; they could touch; they could— "What do you dream of at night? What do you lack?" Another hand rises to the other side of Prussia's face, and he is guided up, and up, to the blue sea of France's eyes. "What do you... want?" 

"To secure—" His lips moved against the pad of France's thumb, and it gently pressed down until he fell silent. A soft, breathy, chuckle. 

"No, my dear. Not your goals. Not your passion. The dark and hidden things that you do not speak aloud, not even to the mirror." 

Another rush of heat, across his cheeks, creeping up over his neck in a thousand pin pricks, and it occurred to him that he was blushing— _blushing_. To call shame something so innocent as a blush. 

"Ah," France's hands caressed his face, as soft as a dream; Prussia never controlled his dreams, and he always woke with the reassurance that they meant nothing. _Nothing_... He could control this, and yet— "You don't need to answer, I can see it." 

He should control it. Control himself. He should not have come here at all. 

"Sloth, I would never accuse you of." France's touch trailed over his jaw, and down his throat, and Prussia's body reacted before he could clamp down the reflex to tremble. "But, gluttony, my dear, you are not immune from." 

_I am not your dear anything_ or _I'm not half the glutton you are_ or something stronger _stop this._ The most Prussia did was squint into France's eyes, as if trying to divine something there. A permission. A condemnation. He was waiting to be told— 

"Oh, I will not lie to tell you that you drink or eat too much. Hardly could accuse someone of enjoying life less. But that, you see, that is where you fail. You cannot breathe without recompense. You do not speak without chastisement. You hardly move without judgment. You _are_ legion, Prussia. And you have convinced yourself that every voice in your head is the devil." The hands at Prussia's throat tightened. His instinct against vulnerability lit up at the same time he leaned into pain. "You are a glutton for punishment, my dear."

Prussia's eyes broke from France's hypnotic stare, and they drifted up, unfocused in the dark, and he wondered if he could live like this, balancing scales. He wondered if there was enough pain in all the world to make up for enjoying himself for even a moment. 

Air returned in a rush, and slim fingers picked at buttons and folds of fabric. France's lips were at his neck where had just been pressure; Prussia had told himself that he would not be weak enough to give into France, before they met tonight. 

"Listen to me, Gilbert— to the name you gave yourself because some part of you aches for something more than the life you force yourself to live— you are not a man, and neither am I, we are something else entirely." The air met Prussia's bare shoulders when France pulled off his jacket, and all his hair stood on end. Nails, gently, infuriating in their gentleness, traced the contour of his collarbone, the muscle in his shoulders, and sent bolts of weakness through the core of him. There was an instant and dazzling effect to the way that France pressed skin to skin. Prussia's body leapt to react, and he knew that France was wrong. About flesh. About how much of a man he was. 

"As something else entirely, we are not beholden to their morality. We have our own codes. Our own laws." France's teeth sank into the muscle between his neck and shoulder, and the sudden pain of it, contrasted with the gentle touch that had made Prussia's entire body sensitive, tore a soft sound from him. Instantly, he felt a cold blossom in the pit of his stomach: disgust. It wasn't strong enough. 

"Relax," France was telling him, and his hands were under his thin, white undershirt; they were kneading muscle and moving across skin. It felt so right, so perfect, that in that moment he almost believed that people had been made to experience love. But then his guilt whispered in the back of his mind that pleasure was weakness, and he caught France's wrist. 

"...Francis." His voice was barely audible. 

He was strong enough to stop the other being, strong enough to pull away, to hurt— that wasn't the only kind of strength that mattered. 

France shook his wrist free, and rested the hand, gently, on Prussia's chest. "I told you, dear, relax." Everything he said was so soft, so easy. As if it were. As if it didn't matter. 

Another word would make this real. So he took, instead, a shaky breath, and he leaned forward in the space, growing warmer every minute, and he rested his forehead against the rich embroidery of France's jacket. He closed his eyes. Where in life was he not already guilty? Wasn't that the point of confession... Of France recounting his sins. 

"Relax and enjoy." France's hand came up behind his neck, thumb gently running over the nape of it, enough of a pressure there to suggest something caring. _Controlling_. 

Prussia didn't know how to relax. 

"You could be a woman as easily as I," France was murmuring, "you are too caught up in these details..." 

Then why wasn't he, and why wasn't France, and what was he supposed to work with if not the details? France always made all the wrong arguments; he thought too much, and he didn't live half of it. 

There was a hand on his belt, working it easily apart, a practiced gesture, and again unbuttoning buttons. Prussia kept his eyes closed. He could feel air again on skin, but it was warmer now. Heat from... Flesh. From breathing and _living_ bodies. 

"We are the same," France nuzzled his cheek, he has raised Prussia's head with a gentle pull at his hair, "let me understand." 

They were not the same, Prussia knew, they couldn't be, because this wasn't about understanding. He _didn't_ understand. Why was it so important to his friend, his enemy, that he... that they... 

France's lips met Prussia's, a shared moment of breath before soft pressure. _Intimacy_... something that shouldn't feel so, so— he wanted to learn into the warmth. He didn't want to ignore the cold dread that crept along the edges of his heart— he wanted it to never have manifested. 

A warm tongue requested permission to pass his teeth, and he parted his lips around it. Clearly, France knew how to kiss, that much was evident. Prussia was not so familiar. He held back, didn't he always? Surveying the situation. Trying to map a strategy... But, this time, someone else was taking charge. 

France pushed him back, and back, and back, like he might fall eternally until his shoulders hit the back wall, and there were arms to catch him, to hold him the way he knew he didn't deserve to be held and shouldn't crave. _It's wrong— it's—_

France coaxed Prussia's tongue from his mouth, toyed with it a moment-- _a predator with prey_ \-- and then gently sucked. Another involuntary sound, this one hardly made: an unfortunate reminder that he was inhabiting the body being used. 

He was in control, and he was failing to— France shifted him, the hand against the small of his back lifting him, pulling the pants of his uniform down around his ankles. Warm air swirled around his legs, hard muscle from years— decades— of marching. The hair stood on end. White hair. And he talked about what was natural: he never justified the way he looked— _chose_ to look. Red eyes and paper skin. 

France broke from the kiss, and Prussia drew a sharp breath in, his head falling back against the wall, his eyes unfocused. He felt the scruff of France's beard against his neck; a symbol of masculinity. Prussia had never had facial hair. _And why...?_

This was a man; he felt like a man despite his soft hands on Prussia's thighs, despite his perfumed skin, despite his silky hair; there was no escaping the fact. It felt good. It _was_ wrong. If he was too used to giving thanks for pain because it indicated to him the path of righteousness, he'd again underestimated the danger of pleasure.

France stood back. "You're beautiful," he said, as he worked off his own jacket and undershirt, dropping them on the floor. It was meant to be a compliment. He said it in the tone of a compliment; it speared Prussia. _Beautiful_ ... Prussia was meant to be strong, to be— to be something that— he was not beautiful. _This_ was not beautiful. 

France was beautiful. He was stunning, formed like those Greek statues of athletes but without the work, his hair a fine gold dust. He stood apart from the proper shame of nudity implicit in the original sin he denied them. Prussia was not one for poetry, but he understood it in the form of France's body. When he felt his skin like rays of an afternoon sun, the words found themselves in every touch. 

Prussia reached up, drawn, thoughtless— helpless— and he pulled France down onto him. Down, out of the last of the fading glow, into the darkness of the intimate space. _Alluring... Enticing... Irresistible…_ Every word used to describe the temptation of sin-- but Prussia did not reflect any weaknesses onto the object of desire. The words were his. The emotions were his. _The weakness..._

Again, he found Francis' mouth with his own, and this time he was not reticent. He searched, from memory, the contours of his warm body— _he was always so warm._ They tangled on the shallow wooden bench, kept upright by their pressing together. He felt France's fingers in his hair, felt France's knee coming up between his legs; he rocked his hips up. 

France had fallen blessedly silent, his mouth preoccupied, his honeyed words having had little effect to begin with. It was part of the song and dance they did, the talking, the arguments that France made which were always all wrong for Prussia; they ended up at the same place. Damp with sweat, panting, and desperate. 

Prussia ground his hips up, against France's thigh, and felt the gesture returned. There wasn't a point to biting back the moan. They were the only two in the Cathedral, and God was all-knowing. 

France lifted Prussia's hips enough to get a hand under him, and he felt the fingertip brush intimately against him before it pushed, slowly, into him. With a soft gasp, Prussia let his forehead drop against France's chest. Despite the sweat, the closeness, he smelled like lily of the valley. Nothing like the men, the real men, that Prussia spent every day beside. Even on the battlefield, after what he knew was days-- weeks-- of grueling work, France always appeared composed. Smelled sweet. 

The second finger entering him felt real enough. Prussia's nails dug into France's back, racked across the muscle there. France had thought ahead, he'd brought lubricant; since he was the lead on their rendezvous, he almost always did. It was almost a shame, though, for how much Prussia _needed_ to hurt. 

And France knew him, he knew how to move inside of him, and where to press. There were always moments where it felt so good that his thoughts ceased entirely, and this was the first. Prussia sucked in a sharp breath. He whimpered. A sound he wouldn't otherwise be caught dead making. And France gave a hum approval, a low sound deep in his throat that Prussia felt between his legs. 

He wanted to beg. He wanted to hear that sound again, to please his— There were limits to what he could bring himself to do, so instead he bit down on France's shoulder, held onto him tighter, and rocked himself against the fingers. Left that _please_ unspoken. 

Each time they moved, Prussia's breath caught, reaching a crescendo when it broke into a cry. Only then did France slide, holding him still, tortuously slow, from him. 

"Bastard," Prussia growled, but it was lost to a kiss. France stroked his hair like one would stroke a prized falcon. And it took more will power not to melt than all the force he'd mustered into his failed resistance. 

"Mon chèr..." France murmured, and Prussia wrapped his legs around his waist, kicking free of his pants, wearing only dusty boots. 

Out of sight, France positioned himself up against Prussia. They moved as one, Prussia feeling himself expand, come to terms with the length, and know France more intimately than he'd ever allowed anyone else. He tried not to think of this as a violation, as something further breaking within his soul: he tried not to think at all. 

France was, for once, helpful with something, grinding his hips up once he was inside, targeting the places that made Prussia whimper. The soldier's bare back pressed into the wooden panels at the back of the booth, France's hand beside his head, his stubble rubbing red into that pale, pale skin, the other arm supporting him so that they could move above the bench. 

This was a rhythm, and rhythm Prussia understood. It was the same as any other drill, to a different beat; a staccato of thrusts marked by flesh hitting flesh, the creaking of wood. Cries rose and fell, Prussia, for once, not biting his tongue, France speaking in low and sultry tones, the words of which did not matter. 

France thrust up, hard, and Prussia's back arched, his grip tightening, and his eyes fell from heaven down to that window again, the one where the priest would be watching, now dark. Prussia closed his eyes. "Again," he begged, his voice thick with something else. 

_Again, again, again, again, again_ — he could say it forever, if they just lived in this moment as one, moving as one, breathing as one. If they could be _one—_ it was funny, Prussia thought, how easily he could love France, if France didn't know it. 

As they reached a crescendo, France lifted him again, completely from the bench, bracing him up against only the wall to get a better angle. For all that they were human, and they _were_ human, there were times they brushed it aside: France lifted Prussia with an ease that would have been insulting were he not a nation. But Prussia wasn't thinking about that. He wasn't thinking about anything. 

The best part was always the part he could hardly remember. Not in dreams, not in his wandering imagination when he stood ready to fight for hours. For a few minutes there was only him, and France, and their bodies driven beyond shame to do something wonderfully, fundamentally, _human_ . It was the only thing Prussia knew how to want with his _whole_ being. 

France held him, and he was unafraid to shout, to show someone that he had a heart, after all, after everything he'd tried. He spoke German, and France spoke French, but there was not a word left misunderstood between them when he gave one last cry, pressing into France, and released. The feeling of warmth between them, against their stomachs and thighs, lingered while France thrust a few times more, deeper. 

_Sunlight_ , a gilded and personal feeling, _satisfaction_. 

And then the words rushed away from them like the tide, back out to the seas of faces speaking them with different meaning, and Prussia recalled how dark it was. He felt the looming presence of the tortured Christ they had passed. Sweat was drying on his body, and it was cold without his uniform. 

France untangled from him. "You see?" he was saying, "the joy in letting yourself be loved?" But he was always missing the point, and Prussia pulled his pants back over his legs in stony silence. 

"We only do have each other, after all, and how could one pass eternity in solitude?" France was also dressing again, and he seemed so pleased and unabashed that Prussia would not have been surprised if he'd used the holy water nearby to wash. 

Prussia buttoned his jacket all the way up his neck, covering the marks, and he stood to find his entire body trembling. With a scowl, he corrected the weakness, brushing past France and out the door. Night had fallen. It was no lighter in the Cathedral. A hand fell on his shoulder. France's hand. He didn't look back. 

"My dear, is it not incredible?" 

To what was he referring? Prussia wondered about the kind of penance that France did, calling himself Catholic. He wondered about the church he attended, and the wounds inflected by religious authorities that never even scarred. _Was it enough?_ he asked himself. He might as well have asked _will I ever die?_ For as much as it mattered to him. 

The massive structure was lost to a fog of darkness, all the glittering details obscured, and, _yes_ , he thought, _this is more accurate._

"You're young yet," France said, haughty and beautiful, and for the world the furthest thing from Prussia. 

_So we're both liars._

"I have to return to my men," Prussia replied, without really saying anything, and shrugged the hand away. 

He was used to hell, anyways. 

  
  
  



End file.
